Oklahoma is not in the Midwest, y'all

[Studying Okie]

Howdy everybody! More and more I see and hear Oklahoma being referred to as part of the Midwest, and I do not at all agree with this.

Obviously Oklahoma is located halfway between the east and west coasts, and I think most people in Oklahoma use the term "midwest" to reflect that we are in the central part of the country. We use the Midwestern label pretty ambiguously; what do we mean? Do we mean we're in a region that stretches from Texas clear to North Dakota? The Central time zone? The Great Plains? My hunch is that most Oklahomans tend to think of the Midwest as being the states that have a Big 12 school (but I can't prove this, plus West Virginia would be an outlier now).

The problem with calling ourselves Midwestern is that it groups us in with the actual Midwest (the U.S. Census Bureau formerly called these the North Central United States: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin). I don't think we have very much in common with any of these states, except for Kansas and Missouri and maybe Nebraska. Does anyone think that we are in a different region than Texas??

I will definitely acknowledge that different parts of Oklahoma could be attached to different regions, and there are different types of regions (regions based on topography vs. culture), but growing up and still today I think of Oklahoma as being part of the South. I'm interested in what y'all have to say, and thanks for reading.

[bchris02]

It's not easy to compartmentalize Oklahoma. This is a state where the South, the Midwest, and the Southwestern United States all meet. The Southeastern part of the state is purely Southern. Tulsa has more of a Midwestern vibe than does OKC and western Oklahoma and the Panhandle start to feel more Southwestern. I would agree though that the predominant influence culturally is Southern especially in 2015. If nothing else, the politics and religious affiliation here are in line with the South. There are key differences however between Oklahoma's brand of Southern and what you find in Tennessee or Alabama. Spend a week in Memphis and then come back to Oklahoma City and you'll see a clear difference. Okie culture has a ruggedness to it that is lacking in the Deep South in my opinion and I believe that has a lot to do with how the state was settled and the industries that have driven Oklahoma's economy since the beginning of statehood.

[Jake]

My mother's side of the family is from Mississippi. That's the South. Oklahoma is like South-lite. But like you said, parts of the state are more Midwestern, Southern, Southwestern, etc.

Oklahoma's kind of in an odd place, haha.

[Celebrator]

I find that it feels less eastern than the Midwest, less southern than the deep South, and less southwestern than NM or AZ. It really is a nice blend of things that are hallmarks of each place and that they compliment each other well. My preferred term for the region Oklahoma is in is The Heartland. I know it is a bit ambiguous and not an official governmental label, but I think it fits Oklahoma pretty well.

[dankrutka]

When I've been to the South it's like a culture shock to me. Aside from Little Dixie Southeast Oklahoma, the state is NOT particularly southern culturally (just politically). Oklahoma has much more in common with Texas and Kansas than Louisiana and Mississippi. As stated above, Oklahoma is kind of a convergence of multiple regions both geographically and culturally and doesn't got nearly into any one.

[Studying Okie]

My mother's side of the family is from Mississippi. That's the South. Oklahoma is like South-lite. But like you said, parts of the state are more Midwestern, Southern, Southwestern, etc.

Oklahoma's kind of in an odd place, haha.

Mississippi is about the most Southern state there ever was, and while I'm not denying there are differences between Mississippi and Oklahoma, there are also lots of similarities. My family is also from Mississippi (and Alabama and Tennessee), but they made it to Southwest Oklahoma about 125 years ago. They kept on being Southern though.

When I've been to the South it's like a culture shock to me. Aside from Little Dixie Southeast Oklahoma, the state is NOT particularly southern culturally (just politically). Oklahoma has much more in common with Texas and Kansas than Louisiana and Mississippi. As stated above, Oklahoma is kind of a convergence of multiple regions both geographically and culturally and doesn't got nearly into any one.

Could you describe the culture shock? I've never experienced any culture shock while visiting the Deep South, but I've also never spent more than a week over there at a time.

I'm not really sure what you mean that Oklahoma is mostly not culturally Southern, but politically is. Politics tend to be a reflection of culture, and our politics do reflect that our state was predominately settled by people from the South (including Texas). Not only Little Dixie, but also Southwest Oklahoma and Northeast Oklahoma were settled by a majority of people from the South, and the only part of Oklahoma that wasn't is Northwest Oklahoma. You will still hear Southern accents and find Southern Baptists in the Northwest part of the state, despite most people up there not having a Southern background. They picked up those Southern cultural traits right here in Oklahoma.

Thanks for the comments everyone! Keep them coming!!

[AP]

I feel like we've talked about this extensively here.

fivethirtyeight did a couple pieces on which states think they are the south and midwest.



http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/w...n-the-midwest/



http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/w...-in-the-south/

[jccouger]

Great Plains.

But as others have said, we have a little southern hospitality and midwestern blue collar blood, as well as dash of southwestern flair.

My entire life I've struggled with what region we fit in, but great plains has really got to be the closest bet.

[zachj7]

This has been beat to death mainly in other forums, and ideally, it would be nice to keep that there. BUT, since it's been brought it up (again), Oklahoma is more in tune with plains states (Texas, Kansas, Nebraska) than the south IMO. Oklahoma is truly a crossroads state incorporating the south, southwest, west, and midwest. I am not sure some are so disgruntled by this. It's like some people have an agenda to make Oklahoma in the south. Oklahoma is just Oklahoma. The states that surround Oklahoma: Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado combined somewhat make up Oklahoma culturally.

[bchris02]

This has been beat to death mainly in other forums, and ideally, it would be nice to keep that there. BUT, since it's been brought it up (again), Oklahoma is more in tune with plains states (Texas, Kansas, Nebraska) than the south IMO. Oklahoma is truly a crossroads state incorporating the south, southwest, west, and midwest. I am not sure some are so disgruntled by this. It's like some people have an agenda to make Oklahoma in the south. Oklahoma is just Oklahoma. The states that surround Oklahoma: Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado combined somewhat make up Oklahoma culturally.

Some do have an agenda to make Oklahoma as part of the South and others have the opposite agenda.

It's the socially conservative politics and the predominance of Southern Baptist churches statewide that tilt this argument towards the South. Outside of that, Oklahoma has little in common with Alabama outside of maybe the Little Dixie region.

[adaniel]

This has been beat to death mainly in other forums, and ideally, it would be nice to keep that there. BUT, since it's been brought it up (again), Oklahoma is more in tune with plains states (Texas, Kansas, Nebraska) than the south IMO. Oklahoma is truly a crossroads state incorporating the south, southwest, west, and midwest. I am not sure some are so disgruntled by this. It's like some people have an agenda to make Oklahoma in the south. Oklahoma is just Oklahoma. The states that surround Oklahoma: Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado combined somewhat make up Oklahoma culturally.

It is beaten to death because Americans love to segregate or separate things. It makes it easier for us to not think about stuff so we have more time to do truly important activities, like tweet or watch the Kardashians. Oklahoma, of course, cannot be grouped so lazily.

While I tend to agree that OK as a midwestern state is somewhat weak, I think part of it stems from the fact that the Great Plains is considered a subset of the Midwest. OK has very little in common with the Great Lakes States, but neither does Nebraska or the Dakotas. Over time "midwest" has just become a catch-all for everything north of a certain latitude between the Appalachians and Rockies, when this area included a multitude of differing and diverse regions. I will say that Tulsa does share a lot of traits with lower midwestern cities like Kansas City, St Louis, Indy, etc. but that is the extent of a midwest influence in the state.

Of all the descriptions I've heard, Southern Plains is probably the most accurate for Oklahoma.

[Pete]

I agree that the large amount of Southern Baptists is what most closely ties the state to the South.

But Oklahoma was not even a a state during the Civil War, so in that one respect it is completely different than what everyone considers to be Southern states.

My family moved to OK from Wisconsin and I think everyone will agree that Wisconsin is in the Midwest. And culturally, the two states are very, very different. I remember feeling like an outsider when I was young. Part of it was religion; we were Catholic and even the non-Baptist churches in OK seemed evangelical and thus very different. But tons of other things too, like Wisconsin and that area is much more ethnic, in that there were large groups of Germans and Italians and Poles and Greeks and in Oklahoma, you didn't see any of that.

The evangelical Christian thing -- especially in the 60's and 70's when I was kid -- was the dominant cultural force, and still has a big impact today.

However (and I've told this story before) I remember getting strange looks in the 80's when I went with friends to visit a buddy living in Memphis. None of us had much in the way of accents, and I clearly remember getting "where are you from?" looks when I spoke. You would have thought I was from the Bronx; but they just knew I wasn't from around there and that seemed to matter a lot.

Also, in the late 90's I used to travel quite a bit to Atlanta on business. One weekend I stayed over with a friend from grad school and we went to hear live music in a park. I always thought that Atlanta was the Dallas of the South: modern, prosperous and fast-growing. But at the end of the concert they played -- as in the music organizers -- the Battle Hymn of the Republic, and the crowd largely went wild. Completely random; had nothing to do with the gathering. And there were plenty of confederate flags in the back of trucks in the parking lot. I remember thinking, "What the hell is happening here??"

[Dustin]

I've always said we are South-Central Plains.

[dankrutka]

When I'm in the south the accents, dress, food, culture, racial underpinnings all felt so different from my childhood in Tulsa. Then again, unlike Pete, I grew up in the Catholic Church and I didn't even realize the prevalence of evangelical southern baptists until I was older.

[Pete]

Dan, I went to Putnam City schools in OKC and it seems like 98% of the kids were evangelicals and most Baptists.

I clearly remember several of my teachers talking about church and the bible, always from an evangelical view. In elementary school teachers would tell the girls "it is not God's will" for them to wear any sort of makeup, and other such nonsense.

At Hefner Jr. High -- at that time the largest junior high in the state -- we could not have dances because our principal was Baptist. Also, girls could not wear blue jeans and other crazy strict rules, all due to his personal convictions. At adjacent Central Jr. High, they had no such rules at all.

In high school, there was a morning prayer over the intercom system where the student Chaplain -- almost always a member of PC Baptist Church -- mentioned Jesus every single time. Same at all sporting events. Nevermind we had some Jewish kids and plenty who weren't religious at all.

There was so much peer pressure that as a Catholic I was frequently told I was going to hell if I didn't go to Baptist church and go running down the aisle to my born-again salvation.


If it sounds like I'm bitter, it's because I am. All of this was completely out of control and inappropriate. No kid in public school should have ever been subjected to that type of religious zealotry, let alone in what at the time was considered the best schools system in the state.

I assure you my cousins in Wisconsin had no such experiences.

[Urbanized]

^^^^^^^^^^^
I had a number of similar experiences in Wichita. And Kansas most certainly AIN'T the South.

[MsProudSooner]

Dan, I went to Putnam City schools in OKC and it seems like 98% of the kids were evangelicals and most Baptists.

I clearly remember several of my teachers talking about church and the bible, always from an evangelical view. In elementary school teachers would tell the girls "it is not God's will" for them to wear any sort of makeup, and other such nonsense.

At Hefner Jr. High -- at that time the largest junior high in the state -- we could not have dances because our principal was Baptist. Also, girls could not wear blue jeans and other crazy strict rules, all due to his personal convictions. At adjacent Central Jr. High, they had no such rules at all.

In high school, there was a morning prayer over the intercom system where the student Chaplain -- almost always a member of PC Baptist Church -- mentioned Jesus every single time. Same at all sporting events. Nevermind we had some Jewish kids and plenty who weren't religious at all.

There was so much peer pressure that as a Catholic I was frequently told I was going to hell if I didn't go to Baptist church and go running down the aisle to my born-again salvation.


If it sounds like I'm bitter, it's because I am. All of this was completely out of control and inappropriate. No kid in public school should have ever been subjected to that type of religious zealotry, let alone in what at the time was considered the best schools system in the state.

I assure you my cousins in Wisconsin had no such experiences.

I had similar experiences in my small western Oklahoma town. It was dominated by the Baptist and Church of Christ denominations. It permanently turned me against those 2 denominations.

[Teo9969]

Evangelicalism is by no means a Southern only thing, and if that's our strongest tie to the South, we're not Southern at all.

Oklahoma was developed on the following events:

Native American Relocation: Roots - Native American
The Land Run: Roots - Everywhere
Oil Boom: Roots - Texoma/California

Both OKC and Tulsa have closer ties to both Kansas City and Dallas than we do any southern city…Tulsa more toward the former and OKC more toward the latter.

Oklahoma is Oklahoma and Texas is Texas…but if it takes 2 states to make a region, you won't find any close matches to either Texas or Oklahoma outside of each other. Neither is even remotely the south (even though we deal with certain similar issues).

[kevinpate]

If states were created at soda fountains, we'd be what we called a suicide back in the day (perhaps the younglings still do) .. a little bit of everything and cool as cool can be.

[Pete]

Not exclusively southern but predominantly so:

[gopokes88]

Oklahoma is the baskin robbins of states.

It's got some Southwestern to it with the Cowboy and bootstraps culture. However it lacks the environment the true SW states have. Desert (desert and plateaus, most of OK is way too green, except for far western OK)
We have some southern roots but we lack the food that's famous in the south. Particularly BBQ and grits.
It's Midwestern but by geography only.

We really are closest to Texas culture wise. However, with Texas becoming an I-35 economic powerhouse they are becoming just....bigger then we are. Which is fine I'd rather have most of the same things but not as big. The it's bigger in Texas mantra gets old.

Ethnically we have some similarities to New Mexico as both are melting pots. New Mexico was settled a long long time ago by Native American Indians. Then in the 1500s the Hispanics (true Hispanics not the PC BS kind) came from Spain, rather then stopping in Mexico they continued on up into NM. Then people from Mexico came up the Rio Grande along with white people from the East. So you truly have 4 distinct groups in New Mexico, the media will make you think Mexican=Hispanic, but that's actually not even remotely true in New Mexico.
In Oklahoma you have everyone who came from the land rush, and the Indians who were forced to come here. Both states have always been melting pots although New Mexico's might be older.

When I think Oklahoma I think, Cowboys and Indians, Dust Bowl, Tornado's, and Sooner football (vomit, but it's true).

[Teo9969]

Not exclusively southern but predominantly so:

Not really even close to predominantly. There's a reason you have a convergence on the line of Southern/Midwestern as the states most evangelical because the non-southern brand of evangelicalism is just as strong as the southern baptist and they've converged more and more in the last decade or two. There are many non Southern movements that have played a big part in Oklahoma's push toward extreme Evangelicalism (Non-southern Baptist movements, Methodist movements including Nazarenes, Pentecostal Movements including Assemblies of God, Non-Denominational movements, etc.) Yes Southern Baptists may be larger than any one other congregation in Oklahoma, but the sum of the non-southern movements is equal to or greater than the Southern movements in Oklahoma.

[Pete]

I meant evangelicalism is predominantly a Southern thing.

[Studying Okie]

Well I apologize for re-hashing an issue that some folks I guess don't like discussing. This is a topic that I've really given a lot of thought into and would like to have an open (and serious) discussion about. It seems to me that individual opinions of where Oklahoma's region lies has a lot to do with an individual's background. For example, I mentioned that my family came to Oklahoma before statehood from different parts of the South, which is pretty much true for most people in Southwest Oklahoma. Cotton is still big down there, most people speak with a Southern accent, counties named for Southerners (like Tillman County), and lots of other things typical of a Southern population. I moved to Oklahoma City at a young age, but I felt (perhaps incorrectly) the differences between my town in Southwest Oklahoma and Oklahoma City were due to the fact that Oklahoma City was simply a big city.

My frame of reference might be more "Southern" than most people's in OKC, but I do think that the way people here think of our state has a lot to with where they're from. I think that the people who came to Oklahoma City from the Northwest part of Oklahoma or the Midwest will probably be less inclined to think of Oklahoma as part of the South. The same might be true of people who come to Oklahoma from the Deep South and see wheat farms and pump-jacks and think they have left the South. But what do they make of Okies with Southern accents, schools named for Confederate officers, Oklahoma's Jim Crow history, the fact that OKC has many times as many BBQ places as the average American city?

I feel like we've talked about this extensively here.

fivethirtyeight did a couple pieces on which states think they are the south and midwest.



Which States Are in the Midwest? | FiveThirtyEight



Which States Are in the South? | FiveThirtyEight

Glad you posted this! FiveThirtyEight's data contributes to my theory that the Midwest in Oklahoma means something different than it does nationally. These maps aren't based on which states consider themselves Midwest, but rather which states are considered Midwest by most people nationally. From their survey, 82% of Oklahomans think Kansas is the Midwest, 73% of Oklahomans think Nebraska is in the Midwest, 71% of Oklahomans think Missouri is in the Midwest, 57% of Oklahomans think Iowa is in the Midwest, 49% of Oklahomans think South Dakota is in the Midwest, 45% of Oklahomans think that Arkansas is in the Midwest, 43% of Oklahomans think North Dakota is in the Midwest, 37% of Oklahomans think Minnesota is in the Midwest, 37% of Oklahomans think Ohio is in the Midwest, 27% of Oklahomans think Wisconsin is in the Midwest, 27% of Oklahomans think Michigan is the Midwest,

And 65% of Oklahomans think we are in the Midwest, with 53% thinking we are in the South. Nationally, 36% of people think Oklahoma is in the Midwest, and 18% think it's the South. I really think that most Oklahomans think the Midwest means "middle of the nation".

I am also unsure of the sample sizes; some states had a lot of respondents and some only had one.

This is where you can play around with FiveThirtyEight's data: Where Americans Think They Live - Mode Blog

[adaniel]

I meant evangelicalism is predominantly a Southern thing.

Not to stray off topic too much, but my cousin had a very similar experience to you in, of all places, Colorado Springs. My uncle was an army officer and stationed in Fort Carson in the late 90's, about the same time a lot of evangelical organizations based in the city were at their peak power. These places like Focus on the family employed a ton of people and had a direct impact on the culture of the town. They themselves were committed Methodists but were basically run out of town. From what I hear, it is not as near as intense once Ted Haggard fell from grace. But it does go to show you evangelical Christianity is not a southern-exclusive thing, at least not these days.

I remember a survey recently showed Oklahoma had a lower church attendance rate than most of the south (although higher than the national average).